Robert Rorabeck

The Heart In A Callous Valentine - Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Inebriations christened two same muses, One sick and one dying-On the evening news every mourning, The sad calm trust I give my inability to live, To drink sociallyTo compose to the sun’s appropriate attributes, But never pretending to believe that I am dying, Just driving around in cars like other supposed Gentlemen, tremulating This way and that as I am trying to hide my scars, Populating my amusements well into theBluer dark of crepuscule, Where the mailboxes sleep, where the moon isFanning, Rippling like a junoesque dancer before the dawn, Rippling along the mowed park of everyMiddle lawn, While its ice-cream man sleeps; and I think of howI should like to touch you, Parked out in the middle of the burned hills ofCalifornia, North of Hollywood, nestled with serial killersAnd the other heirlooms the ancestries of your Burned out love- How maybe you almost touchedMe, Before you flew away and grew up and learned How to better feed the tourists From that lascivious vineyard that goes all the wayDown your mouth And entangles fat scuppernongs like a chain linkFence bending down in an over sick garden Which grunts the muddy beating Of the heart in a callous valentine.